Tim Grobaty: What was your best Arena rock show? Tell us

SHARE YOUR MEMORIES OF ARENA ROCK: On Dec. 10, 1971, we got a call from our friend Richard who told us to put on some black slacks, a white shirt and a bow tie, and he could get us into the Who concert that evening at the Long Beach Arena. We were told to go to the back entrance and tell the guy at the door that we work in concessions.

"The Arena is round," we said to Richard. "How can you tell where the back is?"

"It's at the opposite end of the front," he explained. "Oh, and you have to be there at 4."

"But it's a 7:30 show," we said.

"Do you want to go or not?" he yelled. "I can call someone else."

So we did as we were told (after first going to our dad to get a night's reprieve from restriction for some imagined slight; if we'd asked our mom, who doubtlessly put us on restriction in the first place, we'd have gone 0-for-Who that evening), and along with our black-slacked and bow-tied friend Jeff, saw the Who in one of the most historic nights of rock at the Long Beach Arena.

It was a show in support of the band's then-new "Who's Next" LP, which we're pretty sure is the band's best record, and the show featured Pete Townshend famously screaming a diatribe at the crowd that would later be the kick-off track for the band's box set, "Thirty Years Of Maximum R & B."

And we're not even sure if that's the best concert we ever attended at the Arena.

The hall, which co-existed for a few years with its next-door neighbor, the Municipal Auditorium, turns 50 next week, which makes this a great time to reflect on the hall's greatest hits.

Rummage through your personal experiences and ticket stubs and tell us some of your favorite moments at the Long Beach Arena, and we'll print as many as we can next week in a couple of days' worth of history columns about the hall that opened on Oct. 4, 1962.

People more or less our age had the best times, musically, anyway, at the Arena which, in the 1970s, played host to some of the biggest names in rock history.

Here's a year-by-year best-of of the decade to help rattle your brain:

1970: The Doors, the Moody Blues (with the Steve Miller Band and Poco), Jethro Tull

1971: Deep Purple (with opening act Rod Stewart, before he was sexy; and, again, we had to dress like a monkey and get there early), the Who, Alice Cooper, Black Sabbath

1972 Your Year of Years: The Allman Brothers Band (with, if our memory hasn't abandoned us, the Marshall Tucker Band and Boz Scaggs), the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Leon Russell, Santana, Elvis Presley and the Grateful Dead

Forgot about what? Talking Heads? Seals and Croft? Dylan? The Eagles' famous break-up concert on July 31, 1980, when Don Felder and Glenn Frey exchanged death threats between each song ("Only three more songs until I kick your ass, pal," Felder reportedly hissed at Frey toward the end of their Long Beach set, with Frey repeating the threat back at Felder during "The Best of My Love.")?

So, whether we've mentioned it here or neglected it in our brisk recap of great moments in Arena rock, take a moment to jot down your recollections of your favorite show in the 50 years of music at the Arena. Send it via email, Facebook or Twitter, and we'll hit the high spots next week.